PHIL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Peter Van Inwagen, Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit
Peter Van Inwagen
● Peter disagrees with Hume. He is an incompatibilist.
● Hume’s view:
○ 1. Free will is a matter of doing what you will.
○ 2. Free will is a matter of being able to choose between alternative courses of
action
○ What you do is up to you.
● He believes they cannot say this without rejecting an important principle
● Consequence argument
○ A is a statement
■ If A, then B is true.
■ If A is something beyond your control, if it is not up to you that B follows
from A, then it is not up to you that B is.
○ Let A = the way the laws of nature operate on matter at some point in the distant
past.
○ Let B = some event that you take yourself to be free with regard to, ex. Coming to
class
○ B is future relative to A
○ Determinist would say:
■ if A, then B.
■ A is something which is not up to you, because you could not have
influenced the way the laws of nature operated on matter in the past.
■ It is not up to you that if A, then B
■ If it is true that ‘It is not up to you that if A, then B’, then B is not up to you
either.
● Suppose you believe in free will, and you don’t want to reject the no choice option, then
you have to reject determinism. They cannot coexist.
Harry Frankfurt
● Frankfurt’s defense of Compatibilism
● Thought experiments - Frankfurt cases/examples
● ‘On Bullshit’ harry frankfurt
● Suppose it’s election time
○ Jones wants to vote for Hillary
○ Black is a neuroscientist who came up with a device - if Jones were to decide to
vote for Trump, Black would trigger the device and he wouldn’t be able to.
○ If Jones votes for Hillary, nothing will happen.
○ If Jones votes for Trump, he will actually vote for Hillary
○ Jones votes for Hillary
○ Did Jones have more than one course of action?
○ No
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Document Summary
Free will is a matter of doing what you will. Free will is a matter of being able to choose between alternative courses of action. What you do is up to you. He believes they cannot say this without rejecting an important principle. If a is something beyond your control, if it is not up to you that b follows from a, then it is not up to you that b is. Let a = the way the laws of nature operate on matter at some point in the distant past. Let b = some event that you take yourself to be free with regard to, ex. Determinist would say: if a, then b. A is something which is not up to you, because you could not have influenced the way the laws of nature operated on matter in the past.
